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Re: Scientific knowledge

Here’s a question given that after the flood the only living humans were Noah and his family. What would be the expected population now?
Second question given the racial characteristics of Noah and his family what would explain the wide range of racial types we have now?

The definition of stupid has got to be the belief that more guns will negate the bloodshed done with guns.

Re: Scientific knowledge

Originally Posted by twodot

A few years ago I went to a seminar by Dawkins at Rockefeller University. Rockefeller has something like 23 Nobel Laureates associated with its faculty, and does not suffer fools. Dawkins was an invited speaker. The 2 day symposium had also featured the first results of the genome for Neanderthal. The auditorium was packed. I noticed three Nobel Laureates, Rockefeller faculty, in the audience. They had come to listen to Dawkins.

I remember one slide, an 1800s pen and ink drawing of a rhinoceros, the finale to a buildup that bacteria pass on their genetic information to progeny in 20 minutes' time...and then there is the rhinoceros. The audience all laughed. You had to be there, I guess.

Anyway, Frank, read The Selfish Gene, please. It is a landmark work.

I won't hold my breath.

Wow! - August company here ....... folk who mix with even august-er company .....

I have tried to read Dawkins - in fact i started on "Greatest Show....." because he affirmed in the beginning that he was, in this book, going to set out the evidence for Evolution.

He stated that, in all of his previous books, though he wove evolution into them, he had never actually set out the evidence .....

Well, fair enough - so i didnt suppose, going on that statement, there was / is much purpose in my bothering with The Selfish Gene.

So i waded in - the GSoE is a big book - and i was blown away with his eloquence. I wont say i was captivated by his stories about Natural Selection, fascinating as they were - I was looking for that Evidence for Evolution. in the end i gave up on him. i couldnt find anywhere where he presented a verified mechanism as to how Chimps got to be Smarter Chumps - or anything that showed how variation within a limited gene pool of the species, or kind, or whatever, could break out beyond the limitations of that gene-pool - and establish a novel gene-pool - something that had not been around before.

Then, towards the end of the book, i came across what i took to be a most damming admission, to the effect that he didnt know - and nobody knew....

So i gave up on him again.

I can only assume he was invited to speak for his entertainment value. i cant imagine that he had anything of substance to contribute to that audience. I guess got a good reception for his Tribal Misotheist cracks and left everyone with a warm, selfsatisified glow....

even as rome burned -even the royal society was apparently unable to pull any rabbits out of the mess that is the state of Evolutionary "Science".

the wheels of science, as has been pointed out repeatedly here, must eventually grind out the truth - but it can take decades - viz poor old Semmelwieis. meanwhile career structures, egos, funding streams, tribal loyalties , etc, etc ,tend to keep bankrupt ideas steamrollering on - aided sometimes , perhaps, with a touch of bloodyminded (or casual- , or blind- , or whatever, take your pick) evil.....

breath easy ( just maybe there is Someone in charge waiting out in the wings for the fullness of things)

Re: Scientific knowledge

Wow! - August company here ....... folk who mix with even august-er company .....

I have tried to read Dawkins - in fact i started on "Greatest Show....." because he affirmed in the beginning that he was, in this book, going to set out the evidence for Evolution.

He stated that, in all of his previous books, though he wove evolution into them, he had never actually set out the evidence .....

Well, fair enough - so i didnt suppose, going on that statement, there was / is much purpose in my bothering with The Selfish Gene.

So i waded in - the GSoE is a big book - and i was blown away with his eloquence. I wont say i was captivated by his stories about Natural Selection, fascinating as they were - I was looking for that Evidence for Evolution. in the end i gave up on him. i couldnt find anywhere where he presented a verified mechanism as to how Chimps got to be Smarter Chumps - or anything that showed how variation within a limited gene pool of the species, or kind, or whatever, could break out beyond the limitations of that gene-pool - and establish a novel gene-pool - something that had not been around before.

Then, towards the end of the book, i came across what i took to be a most damming admission, to the effect that he didnt know - and nobody knew....

So i gave up on him again.

I can only assume he was invited to speak for his entertainment value. i cant imagine that he had anything of substance to contribute to that audience. I guess got a good reception for his Tribal Misotheist cracks and left everyone with a warm, selfsatisified glow....

even as rome burned -even the royal society was apparently unable to pull any rabbits out of the mess that is the state of Evolutionary "Science".

the wheels of science, as has been pointed out repeatedly here, must eventually grind out the truth - but it can take decades - viz poor old Semmelwieis. meanwhile career structures, egos, funding streams, tribal loyalties , etc, etc ,tend to keep bankrupt ideas steamrollering on - aided sometimes , perhaps, with a touch of bloodyminded (or casual- , or blind- , or whatever, take your pick) evil.....

breath easy ( just maybe there is Someone in charge waiting out in the wings for the fullness of things)

frank(ly)

Well, here again, it's just Frank! being Frank! -- which is to say Frank! isn't being frank.

"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." William Gibson

Re: Scientific knowledge

Originally Posted by WX

Here’s a question given that after the flood the only living humans were Noah and his family. What would be the expected population now?
Second question given the racial characteristics of Noah and his family what would explain the wide range of racial types we have now?

Sorry Gary, finally got round to your questions .......

Short Ans....
1. Just what it is now...
2. Natural Selection and Variation within the Kind / Species / gene-pool...

- if humans had been around for a million years, at a natural increase rate of 0.1% (approx a tenth of the long term average), there would be 10^48 (that number is bigger than Texas) humans today - https://creation.com/where-are-all-the-people

- off the top of my head, within Noahs family there would already be some different genetic lines (through the families of the women) so would there not be all sorts of combinations and variations possible? But , even starting with Adam (and Eve), provided he was loaded genetically with all the information necessary for all the variations you see, then Natural Selection and environmental factors , and geographical separation will do the necessary...

Again, if you grab a single (ordinary brown) pair of guppies from the creek , you can, over a few generations by separating the reddish tails from the yellowish tails, get an aquarium full of red tails , and one of yellow. no big deal.
What intrigues me though, is that if you mix them up and include all the 'discarded lines' and let them breed back to ordinary brown - you will not find it so easy to get the red and yellow again.

Now im no biologist - so i will allow someone else to tidy up this argument.

The point is - this is why the speculative process of " gene duplication, gene mutation, and geographic isolation," that Twodot mentioned, cannot work - because, in the long term, something ends up missing, and the process falls apart, and over millions and billioms of years, chaos rules! ( - IMHUnderstanding. as an engineer)

frank

oh and btw for Dawkins dilemma see P 419 of GSoE - hardly "solid as the Laws of Gravity " i suggest?

Re: Scientific knowledge

From an article on another subject, a psych portrait of Frank!:

The Dunning-Kruger effect explains that the problem isn’t just that they are misinformed; it’s that they are completely unaware that they are misinformed, which creates a double burden.Studies have shown that people who lack expertise in some area of knowledge often have a cognitivebias that prevents them from realizing that they lack expertise. As psychologist David Dunning puts it in an op-ed for Politico, “The knowledge and intelligence that are required to be good at a task are often the same qualities needed to recognize that one is not good at that task — and if one lacks such knowledge and intelligence, one remains ignorant that one is not good at the task. This includes political judgment.” These people cannot be reached because they mistakenly believe they are the ones who should be reaching others.

I suppose something like this ought to have been posted earlier.

"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." William Gibson

Re: Scientific knowledge

I think we can all be ashamed of ourselves.
In a thread "Scientific Knowledge" the posts have been characterized by the Dunning - Kruger Effect , colloquially a "dickhead response" (or for those who might take umbrage , "d..khead").

I have searched "Ask a Geologist" on the net with no response so far, but simple maths says that for a 1000' high rock to erode in 100,000 yrs - thats 1/100' per yr or 1/2 " in 50 yrs.
now that chain set up on the path to the summit would have been there for near that time - anybody noticed the rock eroded 1/2" down from the level of the concrete the posts would have been set in?

I would have continued this with a rant lamenting the degeneracy in science and knowledge (such that we seek to deny the clear evidence for the Noahic event) of these days and linked it to the warning that when the whole world had sunk into "violence and wickedness" as in the "days of Noah" - the 'second coming' will. - but i await confirmation / refutation of such clear evidence as the erosion of The Rock.

Re: Scientific knowledge

Think about it: you used the word "something" because you can't even state what ends up missing.

Thats the beauty of evolutionary science - not only does everything work perfectly with no losses - you even get gains!

(they should apply for perpetual motion or free energy patents)

What is lost is information

in the selection process of natural selection only some of the possibilities are expressed (longer hair for Arctic Wolves) If the climate gets warmer those wolves would be stuck with the longer hair - unless they could interbreed with some wolves that have retained the short hair genes (?)

(i have put the (?) because i recognise i may have mangled the argument - but essentially, do i not have a valid point there?).

Re: Scientific knowledge

Originally Posted by twodot

No. Because information is lost only in your model, which you got from a creationist website and carted over here. If you were curious, which you are not, you would google and find that information is not lost.

Ok I'll have you on - just what would be the Google question please?
or better yet - a reference that you had in mind

Re: Scientific knowledge

Was what I came up with when I searched conservation of information.
They seemed to be pretty sure that the general consensus was that information was not conserved and I would suggest that since DNA information depends upon a physical medium - that is atoms and molecules- then the laws of entropy say that it must be lost

Re: Scientific knowledge

Was what I came up with when I searched conservation of information.
They seemed to be pretty sure that the general consensus was that information was not conserved and I would suggest that since DNA information depends upon a physical medium - that is atoms and molecules- then the laws of entropy say that it must be lost

Nope, that is not what they concluded.

It seems clear that the answer to the question as to whether information is conserved is still an open one. But any answer must inevitably begin with the caveat that, first and foremost, it depends what we mean by information. This need not be a sterile argument about the meaning of words, but rather a means of exploring different concepts of information, and – crucially – the ways in which information of different kinds may interact, and provide linkages between the physical, biological and social worlds.

It really is quite difficult to build an ugly wooden boat.
The power of the web: Anyone can post anything on the web
The weakness of the web: Anyone can post anything on the web.

Re: Scientific knowledge

Originally Posted by twodot

This makes no sense.

As I read the article , it said that it was an "open question" as to whether information could be conserved - just on purely theoretical grounds.

I suggest that , in the real world , because the information depends on being carried by physical matter , and physical matter is subject to entropy , then the information that it carries will be degraded by that entropy.

No matter how many times you pass your floppy disk with a copy of Windows 10 on it through the airport scanner , you will never get an upgrade to Windows 11 let alone an Apple Macintosh program - or would you?

Re: Scientific knowledge

Very eloquent Vince....

So do you happen to have a figure for the erosion rate of the Ayers Rock formation?

Failing that or at least some miraculous mechanism that preserves the rock from weathering for millions of years you are faced with the collapse of the millions and billions of years into mere thousands (at least for this planet) - with all that entails.

Re: Scientific knowledge

Re: Scientific knowledge

Originally Posted by Frank!

I think we can all be ashamed of ourselves.
In a thread "Scientific Knowledge" the posts have been characterized by the Dunning - Kruger Effect , colloquially a "dickhead response" (or for those who might take umbrage , "d..khead").

I have searched "Ask a Geologist" on the net with no response so far, but simple maths says that for a 1000' high rock to erode in 100,000 yrs - thats 1/100' per yr or 1/2 " in 50 yrs.
now that chain set up on the path to the summit would have been there for near that time - anybody noticed the rock eroded 1/2" down from the level of the concrete the posts would have been set in?

I would have continued this with a rant lamenting the degeneracy in science and knowledge (such that we seek to deny the clear evidence for the Noahic event) of these days and linked it to the warning that when the whole world had sunk into "violence and wickedness" as in the "days of Noah" - the 'second coming' will. - but i await confirmation / refutation of such clear evidence as the erosion of The Rock.

bated breathedly,

frank

Having trouble understanding the difference between natural erosive process and that cause by high traffic, ie thousands of booted feet per year?

The definition of stupid has got to be the belief that more guns will negate the bloodshed done with guns.